Denor remembered that day as if it had been personally gift-wrapped and handed to him by Tamet—probably with a note saying, ‘You’ll regret this, but it’ll be memorable.’ It was, after all, the day he dealt with Kirhak.

Kirhak was one of those tyrants that no one particularly liked, but most people tolerated because tyrants, like bad weather, are best endured with the least amount of fuss. The problem was, no one had bothered to do anything about him, so Kirhak walked around like the mountain range itself shook at his approach, believing that the sheer force of his personality made trees tremble and small animals faint in awe.

Unfortunately while that was all very well and good, our heroes needed to find him first in order to put a stop to such activities.

Denor and Charan strode into a small village, a place so small it could have fit comfortably inside a the square of their previous village. His boots, which had trampled through swamps, snow, and at least one Andronian’s prize garden, kicked up a modest cloud as he approached the nearest house. It was one of those corrugated things that screamed ‘functional’ but muttered ‘grim’ during the colder seasons, which in Andron VII was all of them.

"Looks peaceful enough," said Denor, surveying the quaint collection of ramshackle huts, each appearing as though it had been placed by a distracted planner who’d lost the original blueprints.

"We’ve been in peaceful places before, they don’t tend to stay that way," Charan pointed out.

Denor grunted in agreement. Since leaving the village, he was trying his best to be a man of few words, as most of them that forced their way out tended to upset his friend for some reason.

"Where do you reckon he's hiding?" Denor asked, looking at a passing goat with deep suspicion.

Charan scanned the surroundings, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s see. Kirhak’s a petty dictator, terrorizing the locals. Standard tyrant material, right? That means he'd be somewhere with a good view, an ego-polishing vantage point. Tower? Fortified hill? Maybe a really large sanctum of some sort?”

Denor shook his head. “No towers or fortifications in sight, just these buildings,” he paused for a moment. “What about the graveyard?”

“No,” Charan stated emphatically, “no more graveyards, maybe it’s time we asked the locals.”

As if on cue, a villager appeared from behind a low wall, wearing an expression of a man who had spent his entire life in a place where things only ever went slightly wrong. He approached with a sort of nervous hobble, wringing his hands.

“You’re not here to kill us, are you?” The man’s voice dropped to a whisper, as though he expected Tamet to overhear and magically make the two boys destroy the village.

“We’re here for Kirhak,” said Denor, trying to pitch his voice lower and sound like Ledo. “Where is he?”

“Oh, we couldn’t possibly say,” the man replied, glancing nervously at a windows, as though Kirhak might be watching from behind them. “Not that we don’t want to tell you. It’s just that—well, Kirhak isn’t... quite what you think.”

Charan raised an eyebrow, his curiosity piqued. “Oh? Isn’t he a madman with delusions of tyranny?”

“Yes, yes!” the man said quickly. “He absolutely is. He’s terribly tyrannical. Just… in his own way.”

Charan’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword. “We came here to split heads, not hairs.”

“Yes. He rules from his armchair,” the man continued, voice trembling. “He sends instructions. Very stern ones. The village is simply terrified of what he might do, should we anger him.”

Charan nodded slowly. “Let me get this straight. Kirhak, tyrant of the village, rules by being passive aggressive?”

“Exactly,” said the man, as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. “No one dares cross him. Last week, he threatened to kidnap my daughter!”

“So, let me guess. You want us to deal with him before he escalates matters, right?”

The man clasped his hands together. “Please! You must put an end to his reign. We can’t take much more.”

Denor stared off toward the distance, where the small building in question sat. “Seems simple enough. We’ll deal with him.”

***

They arrived at Kirhak’s abode, which was completely unremarkable from the outside and would have otherwise been impossible for them to find without help or a lot of trial and error. Charan knocked on the door while Denor flexed his fingers ominously. There was a shuffle from within, followed by the door creaking open to reveal Kirhak—a stout man holding a flask of something strong and looking decidedly more like someone’s discontented uncle than a tyrant.

"Yes?" Kirhak said, squinting at them and taking another swig. "Can I help you?"

Denor drew himself up to his full height, but wasn’t quite tall enough to loom yet. "We’re here to end your tyranny."

Kirhak blinked. "Ah. Well. That is a bit inconvenient, isn't it? I was just about to start my morning walk."

Charan cleared his throat. "You've been terrorizing the village, according to one eye witness and another old man."

"Goodness," Kirhak said, looking genuinely surprised. "Have I?"

"With demands," Denor growled. "And threats."

"Oh, well," Kirhak waved dismissively, "it’s just that some of the villagers can be so... tedious. Someone has to deal with them."

Charan narrowed his eyes. "Deal with them how, exactly?"

Kirhak pondered this. "Every place no matter how small has someone like me, someone to deal with the little folk. Someone to impose order."

Denor unsheathed his sword halfway. "I demand that you face us."

Kirhak sighed. "Can I at least finish my flask? I don’t think I want to do this sober."

Denor paused, then sheathed his sword entirely. "Fine. But make it quick."

And so, they waited while Kirhak, tyrant of the village, finished his flask, which he did with a surprising amount of focus considering there were armed men at his door. Eventually, he stood, stretched, and walked out the front door into the town square.

Well, staggered.

***

"Look at me!" Kirhak drunkenly shouted, voice echoing across the square, "Tough as Andronian rock, I am! Nothing can hurt me!" To emphasize the point, he slapped his own chest with a sound like a wet towel being flung against a stone wall. His self-confidence was both unshakable and, to anyone paying attention, utterly delusional.

Unfortunately for Kirhak, the one person who was paying attention was Denor.

Kirhak, as oblivious as a man could be while wearing that much arrogance, didn’t notice our hero stalking towards him through the crowd until it was too late. He was still spouting off, something about Denor being simply another tyrant, when Denor’s sword flashed in the midday sun, almost as if it had an important appointment with an actual tyrant’s guts.

“Admit it, Denor!” Kirhak drunkenly bellowed just before everything went terribly wrong. “You’re no better than I am, you—”

And then, Denor was upon him.

There’s a special kind of chaos that happens when a fight breaks out in a village square. People, who just moments before were harmless occupants, suddenly become experts in crowd control, and within moments, a haphazard ring of gawkers had formed around the two men. Denor’s sword swept wildly, and Kirhak, for all his boasting about toughness, was staggering about in a manner which suggested he wanted to avoid it.

Unfortunately for the tyrant, he hadn’t spotted the much more capable Charan entering the fray.

By the time the crowd had the sense to intervene—probably saving Kirhak’s life in the process—the would-be tyrant had acquired a full collection of cuts in all the usual places: face, neck, chest, belly, side. If Kirhak had been a map, he would’ve been covered in red lines marking a particularly violent trade route.

The villagers, which the boys assumed would be happy that their tyrant had taken a licking without dying, were not. They threw random objects at them and forced them out of the settlement.

Kirhak survived, of course—though not without scars, both physical and otherwise—and as soon as he regained enough of his breath to mutter through his bruised lips, he swore vengeance.

Because of course he did.

Denor recalled with perfect clarity the night Charan had dragged him out of village, back to Darag’s place. It was one of those winding trails that seemed to go on forever, Denor finally asked, “Why exactly did they turn on us? I thought they wanted their tyrant deposed.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“This is one of those stupid lessons that old men love to give,” Charan snorted. “Kirhak was no real threat to us, and neither were those pathetic villagers. He just needed humbling so that he would stop bullying them. Or something.”

Denor looked exasperated. “So we weren’t supposed to kill him? He’ll think we were afraid of him because we ran off.”

Charan, being the practical sort, urged caution. “Don’t be daft. No one thinks we’re scared. In fact, most people probably don’t think much of Kirhak anymore now that he’s had his nose knocked out of place. But we can’t afford more trouble, especially with the Trunians breathing down our necks.”

Denor chuckled darkly. “If Kirhak wants to find me, he just needs to search the few remaining houses. There’s only so many places we have left to go.”

Charan looked surprised at this level of deduction from Denor. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Denor said. “I’m sure Kirhak’s all bark and no bite.”

Denor, of course, was completely wrong. Wounding a tyrant’s pride is like kicking a hornet’s nest—you’re likely to regret it sooner or later.

In this case, it was definitely sooner.

***

When they arrived at Darag’s house, the old man was sitting up, puffing away on a pipe that looked like it had seen better centuries. The room, doubling as both living space and bedroom, was filled with the earthy smell of pipe smoke, and the door was open to the cool night air. The insects, seemingly in agreement with Darag’s laissez-faire approach to life, buzzed around the light without bothering anyone.

“So you dealt with Kirhak then?” Darag asked, a smile playing on his lips. He looked distinctly recovered, and the boys couldn’t help but feel like he was toying with them.

“Sort of…” Denor hedged. “We beat him up and Charan cut him with his sword.”

“Then the villagers threw you out,” Darag replied.

“Then the villagers threw… wait, how could you know that?” Charan asked.

The old man laughed, as if this had all been part of some big game. “Of course they threw you out, you weren’t one of them, and they were one of the last Andronian villages left.”

“But you said Kirhak was a tyrant!” Denor exclaimed.

“He was, but he was their tyrant. Now they’ll have to find a new one.”

“I don’t understand,” Charan said, “why send us out there in the first place then if it was pointless?”

Darag arched an eyebrow. “Pointless? I think the point is pretty obvious. Do you understand, Denor?”

After a minute of silence Charan waved his hand at the man, begging him to put him out of his misery.

“You can run around beating people up and destroying their pride, but ultimately that’s not going to make a jot of difference to the bigger picture. The planet is going to keep spinning and it doesn’t matter how big your actions are, things will eventually settle down back to the way they were before.”

“So this whole being a hero thing is pointless?” Charan pressed.

“Of course not!” Darag interjected. “The galaxy needs heroes too, and villains, and scoundrels. Unless you’re ascending to Monarch though you’re not going to enact much change beyond the superficial.”

“So why bother?”

Old Darag looked directly at Denor then, who had been oddly quiet during the other boy’s questioning.

“Fun.”

Denor looked up at the man, the word stirring something in him. “Fun?”

“It’s very fun running about the galaxy, getting into all sorts of adventures, and not having to worry about dying. Tragic, but fun. Far better than staying on this frozen rock.”

“Fun.” Denor stated, something settling deep in the core of his being. “I like having fun.”

The old man grinned at him, but spoke no more on the topic.

Instead they talked about the weather, which, in a place where your livelihood depended on the whims of rain and sunshine, was about as deep a conversation as anyone could have after talking about the nature of heroism and the unchanging galaxy. Eventually, Charan spoke up, still clearly shaken. “Darag,” he began, “that night... You mentioned something about your heart and a Gurruk lending you his. Was that the fever talking, or...?”

Darag took a long drag on his pipe and glanced up, a glimmer of amusement in his old eyes. “Well,” he said slowly, “that depends. How much of the story do you want to believe?”

“Well it’s just that Hevath used to embellish an awful lot and...”

"Delirium?" Darag let out a chuckle like a creaky door swinging open. "Not a shred of it. Truth, plain and simple. Ghurmain—the Gurruk shaman of those mysterious, shadowy parts of the planet—swapped out his own torn, lifeless heart with something... else. He said it was something he worshipped, though what exactly that ‘something’ was, he couldn’t rightly say. Something distant, he reckoned. A god’s got hearts to spare, apparently, but if I bite the dust—if I get my head flattened.”

“Like a pancake,” Denor added, showing excellent memory.

“...or my thoughts snuffed out—then that borrowed heart has to go back to Ghurmain, no questions asked."

Charan raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’re serious about carving your own heart out?”

"It’s got to be done," Darag replied, his voice solemn, like someone reading a particularly grim recipe. "Once the body's just a hollow shell, existence is no better than... well, non-existence, really. Ghurmain said as much. And he’s the expert, isn’t he?"

Charan’s brow furrowed deeper. "And who is this Ghurmain again, really? Some kind of wandering lunatic?"

"I’ve told you already!" Darag sighed, like a man who’s explained the same thing multiple times. "He’s a Gurruk shaman. Walked these lands long before us Andronians came stomping down from the mountains and shoved his people aside. We were comrades once, back in the day. He might just be the last of his kind of Gurruk, at least the last one who can speak our tongue and still knows which way is up."

“Alive, you mean?” Charan pressed, sounding like a man clinging desperately to the last thread of sanity in the conversation.

Darag puffed his pipe and blew out a cloud of smoke, as if the answer lay somewhere in there. "Alive? That’s a bit complicated. I can’t say if he’s breathing or buried. Didn’t even know for sure if he was ‘alive’ when he patched me up after that battle or when we were up north together. Alive in the conventional walking about and doing things sense, mind you. You get what I’m saying?"

Denor, unsurprisingly, didn’t look like he got what Darag was saying. “How many undying things are there, exactly?” he muttered under his breath, a shiver crawling up his spine. Outside, the night had fallen into that eerie stillness where the stars whispered and the woods seemed to be holding their breath. Inside, the flickering light turned Darag’s shadow into something grotesque on the wall, more nightmare than man, his words thick with things better left in dreams.

Darag sighed, long and slow, the kind of sigh you give when explaining algebra to a cat. "I knew you wouldn’t see the bigger picture, Denor, and that’s okay. Hardly surprising. I barely grasp it myself. I’ve got the knowing, but the words, they just... slip away. Ghurmain—he was different, that’s all I can say. Alive, dead... who knows? But he was, and that’s what matters. And more than that, he is."

Charan shot Denor a worried glance. “Are we both mad?”

Darag scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I can tell you this—Ghurmain is one of the few left that are undying."

Charan blinked, then muttered, “Madness…” before freezing, eyes wide. “Wait. What was that?”

Gella cocked her head out the door, listening to the silence that suddenly didn’t feel quite so silent. "Footsteps," she whispered. "Close by. And they’ve stopped."

Without a second thought, Denor stepped into the doorway, letting the backlight spill out around him like a halo, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best decision for a man who wanted to not die over and over again. A shadowy figure loomed just beyond the glow. Before anyone could react, Charan’s voice rang out, “Watch it!” and he tackled Denor to the ground. A bolt whizzed through the air where Denor had been standing, and there was a heavy grunt as Darag toppled to the floor like a felled tree.

"Kirhak!" Charan’s voice cracked. "He’s gone and done it! Darag’s dead!"

“This is for Kirhak,” a voice said.

“Yeah, this is for me!” Kirhak helpfully informed them, before a second bolt tore through Charan’s chest.

“Charan!” Gella screamed, before a large arm tore its way through the open door and nabbed her.

“Denor!” she cried, transforming into a damsel in distress.

Denor scrambled to his feet, catching the engine sound of a skimmer disappearing into the night. Without thinking, he snatched up his sword and bolted out after the retreating shape. He hurled it with all the reckless abandon of someone who hadn’t quite worked out what they’d do next. It clanged off a stone, bounced into the trees, and—by some cosmic joke—a branch collided squarely with the engine of the skimmer, sending it hurtling into the trees.

Denor approached cautiously, breath coming in ragged gasps, and found Kirhak sprawled out like a broken puppet, neck snapped clean as a twig. Denor stared down at the lifeless figure, feeling a strange sense of anticlimax. Kirhak, the tyrant, was no more.

Unfortunately there was no sign of Gella either.

Returning to the house, he found Charan kneeling beside Darag, who was slumped on a bench, his face pale, far paler than anything Denor had ever seen. It didn’t take long to see why. The bolt had struck true, taking Darag’s head almost clean off. Blood and gore were everywhere, and the old man’s face, or what was left of it, bore the grim evidence of this final act.

Denor stood there for a long moment, heart pounding in his chest, as the realization set in: Darag had given his life to save him. And Kirhak? Well, Kirhak had simply lost his to a branch with better aim than the man who threw the sword.

Charan shook like a leaf in the wind, still recovering from the bolt that had unhelpfully settled into his chest. “You reckon he’s really gone?”

Denor glanced at him. “I’d wager even a halfwit could figure that out.”

“Yes, I’m asking you, Denor.”

“Well if you’re asking me, instead of a halfwit then yes, he’s as gone as a very gone thing that has left. I can’t even check his nostrils and ear holes for signs of life!”

Charan bent over Darag’s body, his voice tight with something between fear and disbelief. “He’s stiffening up—rigor mortis is setting in. But... feel his heart!”

Denor hesitated, but curiosity—or some darker force—made him reach out. The flesh was cold, yes, as cold as the frost creeping in through the cracks of the night, but beneath it Darag’s heart was still hammering away like it hadn’t got the memo about the whole ‘being dead’ thing. No blood flowed through his veins anymore, but that pulse... that pulse was like the ticking of an eternal clock, marking time no mortal could comprehend.

“A living thing in a dead shell,” Charan whispered, his face pale, beads of sweat standing out like tiny diamonds. “This isn’t right. No man should persist like this. I’ll do what I promised. It’s my duty now. This... abomination must be stopped.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t have the first clue about how to do this.”

His tools for the task were less than ideal—a practice sword and a hatchet that had seen better days. The stars above twinkled indifferently at the macabre scene unfolding below, and inside, the flickering light played cruel tricks, casting shadows that leapt and twitched. The only sound that broke the thick silence was the grisly crunch of the hatchet meeting bone. Outside, an owl hooted, its eerie call sounding more like a laugh in the face of what was happening.

“Be my guest,” a sweating Charan informed his friend. “I’m not touching it.”

Denor, steeling himself against the nausea churning in his stomach, reached into the opened cavity of Darag’s chest. His fingers wrapped around something smooth, something warm. He pulled it free with a shout, and it slipped from his hands—Darag’s heart, still beating, still alive. It hit the table with a weighty thunk, far too solid for a human heart.

Charan staggered back, eyes wide with horror. “Flesh shouldn’t do that, so I guess this really is made of something else.”

Denor, as if compelled by some force beyond his control, bent down and picked up the heart again. It didn’t feel like a heart—it felt like stone, or maybe metal, smooth and cold, yet pulsing with life. That same feeling as his universal translator, but somehow more powerful. It gleamed in the flickering light, polished like a jewel forged in the depths of the cosmos. And still, it beat. Denor could feel its energy traveling up his arm, sinking into his chest until his own heart pounded in rhythm with it, stronger and stronger, as if the very essence of the universe had been condensed into this single, impossible object. An artefact that was passing its strength on to him somehow.

It was a fragment of eternity, pulsing with the kind of power that only Tamet could comprehend. He wanted it. No, he needed it. His soul yearned for that pulse to replace his own pitiful heart, to fill his chest with the infinite energy of the stars.

Charan gasped, pulling Denor from his reverie. He turned quickly.

A figure had appeared in the doorway, as silently as a shadow slipping across the snow. He was tall, dark, and clothed in the rich, golden garb of a warrior—just like the one Denor had seen in the tomb. His eyes burned, deep and ancient, like embers buried under an ocean of darkness. He extended a hand, silent as the grave.

“Yes, hello, one second,” Denor said, absorbing the last of the heart’s energy.

“Denor, give him the heart right now, please!” Charan shouted at his friend, not wanting to die again so quickly.

Without a word, Denor handed over Darag’s heart, feeling its weight leave his hands as though it were the last connection to a dream fading away. The Gurruk shaman took it and, without so much as a nod, turned and strode into the night.

“Oh and by the way, they kidnapped Gella,” Denor said, watching the mysterious Gurruk retreat.

“What?!”